Moundville reborn

Tuesday

Sep 7, 2010 at 12:01 AM

A small town located in Hale County, Moundville is perhaps now best known as the home to prehistoric Native American mounds, burial sites and artifacts instead of Moundville's downtown and residential areas.

By Ashley BoydPhotos by Michelle Lepianka Carter and Dusty Compton

A small town located in Hale County, Moundville is perhaps now best known as the home to prehistoric Native American mounds, burial sites and artifacts instead of Moundville's downtown and residential areas. While the downtown Moundville area has fallen into a state of decline, as many businesses have closed, there is some hope that the reopening of the Moundville Jones Archaeological Museum will restore some life back into the community.The reopening of Moundville's Jones Archaeological Museum this May marked the completion of the University of Alabama Museums' 10-year, $5 million renovation, featuring interactive displays with more than 200 Native American artifacts. Inside the museum, visitors will find life-size figures representing the culture and jewelry of the ancient Moundville culture with ceremonial feather decorations, pottery and artwork by Native American artists. The artwork is arranged in elaborate displays that come to life when recorded narratives talk about them. There is also a three-dimensional depiction of a Native American maker of medicine who appears in a reconstructed earth lodge.“We're hoping and praying that this will bring some life back to Moundville,” said Lavanda Wagenheim. Wagenheim is the granddaughter of the University of Alabama's first anthropologist, David DeJarnette. The University of Alabama's early ties to Moundville can be attributed to the work of DeJarnette and former Alabama Museum of Natural History director Walter Jones at Moundville. Together, they would lead the first large-scale scientific excavations at the Moundville park in 1929. DeJarnette would go on to serve as director of the park during the 1950s, was a founding member of the University of Alabama Department of Anthropology and was a leading archaeologist in the state for several decades.Wagenheim's mother grew up in Moundville before eventually moving with her husband to St. Louis, Mo., but stayed connected to Moundville. Wagenheim, who would often visit her grandparents as a child in Moundville, would later return to live in the Moundville community. Her memories of the Moundville Archaeological Park and Moundville community are entrenched in her mind.“Moundville is very mystical to me. The mounds have a special power,” Wagenheim said. “I remember being a kid, and my grandfather taking me on his dune buggy up and over the mounds. He could do it because he essentially ‘owned' the place, and I remember seeing the bones and things.”After moving to Tuscaloosa, Wagenheim met and married an archaeologist who worked out at Moundville. Before her husband left archaeology to become a veterinarian, they lived and worked in the park.“I worked there for a year before I had my first child,” she said. “When I was pregnant, I would march across the mounds every morning to go to work. The connection [to Wagenheim's family] was full circle.”Wagenheim and her family have stayed involved at Moundville and were involved in developing the plans for renovation of the Jones Archaeological Museum. The newly renovated museum is the result of a two-year collaborative effort by archaeologists, artists and Native American scholars to create a more up-to-date and in-depth interpretation of the Moundville culture.Included in the exhibits are several Moundville artifacts that have been housed at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of the American Indian for more than a century, including the Moundville duck bowl, considered by some to be among the most important prehistoric artifacts in the U.S. Thirty-five items have been loaned to the Jones Archaeological Museum from the Smithsonian collection that include items first discovered in Moundville a century ago by Clarence Bloomfield Moore, the first archaeologist to dig at Moundville. The Jones Archaeological Museum also features a museum gift shop and cafe that is headed up by Wagenheim's longtime friend Janet Wyatt. During her grandfather's tenure as director of the park, his wife Elizabeth DeJarnette worked at the park's first coffee shop and gift shop in the 1960s. Her family history lives on through the annual David and Elizabeth DeJarnette Endowed Scholarship presented annually to a graduate student whose research project deals with the archaeology of Moundville and an annual barbeque in Moundville in honor of the DeJarnette Scholars that features a ‘secret' DeJarnette barbecue sauce.“The museum is really world class,” Wagenheim said. “You walk in there, and it's just so different. They've done a really good job with the motifs all throughout. From the music, the furniture to the cafe and the way it looks to the displays, you'll find the same kind of styling in any major city. It's something very unusual to Moundville.”Her hopes for the museum are shared by her hopes for the downtown Moundville community. “I would love to see Moundville come back, and I think it's really bizarre that the town has fallen into such decline,” Wagenheim. “Downtown Moundville, as a historic district, used to be very quaint with a hardware store, a pharmacy, a department store and much more. It was once a thriving community, and now there's nothing.”Moundville Park Director Bill Bomar adds that visitation to the park has increased since the museum reopened and hopes the downtown Moundville area will reap the benefits as well.“We definitely want to have a symbiotic relationship with the downtown,” Bomar said. “It's a great situation to have a heritage site that's just right next door to a quaint downtown. I think it would be a great experience if the downtown area could open up some shops that our visitors could enjoy.”